


Prior Restraint

by karaokegal



Category: LA Law
Genre: Canon Bisexual Character, F/F, Gay Rights, Misses Clause Challenge, Multi, Other, Politics, Threesome, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karaokegal/pseuds/karaokegal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>CJ reaches out to an old colleague.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prior Restraint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaegecko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegecko/gifts).



> Thank you, dear recipient for reminding of how much I loved this show and the brou-ha-ha that broke out over THE KISS! Enjoy! Extra-special thanks to [Vanillafluffy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy) for a super-rush and still rigorous beta job.

**Get me a divorce lawyer, the best one you know.**

CJ had picked up the message at 330P on Christmas Eve, and noted that it had been sent at 225P that day. There was no doubt that Ted meant for her to do it immediately, holiday or not. That was Ted for you. CJ liked that about him. She wasn’t particularly sentimental about this time of year, and her own plans for the evening had pretty much been limited to a bottle of Chardonnay, some really good cheese and, in her one concession to anything remotely traditional, a DVD of The Great Escape.

She knew the request wasn’t for Ted personally. He and Lady were as happy as any couple she knew, especially impressive under the circumstances. CJ had moved in parallel circles to Ted and Barbara back when they were practically the Conservative equivalent of Liz and Dick. She’d admired his legal skills then, if not the causes he used them for. The tragedy had clearly changed him, as it would anyone. Now he was one of few people she could actually imagine following to the gates of hell, at least in a jurisprudential sense. 

He had personally asked her to work as a liaison between the various teams involved in both the Prop 8 and DOMA cases, as they made their way toward the Supreme Court. Ted was still leading the Prop 8 effect along with David Boies, and he felt comfortable with the group he’d assembled, but the DOMA cases were more fragmented, with multiple plaintiffs, attorneys and their respective egos involved. CJ had taken a leave of absence from Orrick Herrington in order to become what amounted to a full-time hand-holder and psycho-therapist to a herd of legal prima donnas. She didn’t mind. It was the most important work she’d ever been involved in, and victory was very, very close…or possibly a million miles away. 

In the three weeks since SCOTUS had agreed to hear the case, the fractures and tensions within the assembled forces had become more apparent than ever. CJ had flown to DC, New York and Chicago to conduct “strategy” meetings that were more or less pep-talks designed to make sure everyone was in lockstep as they marched toward the final goal. Word had come via a well-placed insider that one tool the opposition was planning to pull out in their presentation was divorce law and how it would be affected by the DOMA repeal. 

The logical answer was “not in the slightest,” but when things were this emotional, and they were still crafting arguments for Justice Kennedy, logic wasn’t enough. If divorce was on the table, they needed to address it, and Ted was trusting CJ to get the best person to advise the team. 

CJ knew plenty of good divorce lawyers. Orrick had an excellent family law department, any one of whom would be happy to help, although not necessarily to drop everything right this minute. CJ had worked on some high profile Hollywood divorce cases, and was a firm believer in never burning a bridge or throwing away a mobile number. She even considered pulling a favor from David Lee at Lockhart Gardner, but getting his expertise was hardly with dealing with his particularly abrasive personality traits, and besides “pro bono” weren’t exactly his two favorite words. 

As always, when it came to thinking of the _best_ lawyers she knew, CJ’s mind went back to her time at McKenzie Brackman. She knew it was strange. It had only been two years and it felt like a lifetime ago. Since then, she’d worked at multiple firms, moved to San Francisco, been married, moved to New York, gotten divorced and then moved back to LA. She hardly kept in touch with any of them, although somehow she still got cards from Douglas, Leland, Zoey, Tommy and Benny, and she always put those cards on the fridge where looking at them gave her an oddly warm feeling until she took them down in late January. 

Things were fun in those days, even if it sometimes felt like she was living in someone else’s soap opera. McKenzie Brackman managed to attract such an odd mix of personalities and on-going relationships, that CJ had been able to simultaneously lose herself and find her own voice. She’d felt free to say or do anything, and honestly not give a toss what people thought about her. Being away from her father and his overwhelming need for attention gave her room to be herself. And of course, she reminded herself with a rueful smile, she’d been young. Very, very young, which her mirror and her knees told her she wasn’t anymore. Maybe she hung to those memories in order to hang on to the woman she’d been then, even if her life was better now. 

She had the freedom to be alone tonight, because she chose to be, and the freedom to be with her lovers tomorrow at their beach house in Santa Monica. The CJ of McKenzie Brackman was terrified to be tied down to any one relationship with any one gender, and this CJ had found that she didn’t have to be. She’d met Isabel and Victor on a yoga retreat in Majorca and something had clicked. She knew bloody well that these things _never_ work out once everybody gets back to their normal lives, and yet miraculously, it had. Three years of love and amazing sex, and learning more every day about who she was and what she wanted. Together the three of them had negotiated the pitfalls of polyamory, with a total of zero screaming fights, break-ups or threats of homicide. 

Mind you, there’s been a few “family discussions” that had made her want to run into the Pacific Ocean, rather than face her own issues, but she’d learned to sit with those feelings, and remember that she didn’t have play out the programming she’d gotten from her toxic parents. She could admit she was wrong or accept that she wasn’t. She could ask for what she needed and still understand that she might not get it. Love in a triad wasn’t always easy, but it was always worth the hard parts. 

Which still left the matter of making brownies with Ghirardelli chocolate, to take for the party tomorrow and contacting the best divorce lawyer she knew. She would have liked to also make a special batch to take to the hospice when they picked up Victor’s grandmother, but Ted had issued an edict that the team had to be “squeaky clean” since the Disciples of Breitbart would be prepared to do journalistic colonscopies on anyone involved in one of their pet hatreds. Ted knew about her relationship with Isabel and Victor, and felt that was the sort of thing that might be expected anyway, but he couldn’t risk the integrity of the case on a possible “possession with intent to distribute” charge, even for the best of reasons. 

The baking was easy enough, the other decision should have been, but wasn’t and brought her back to her McKenzie Brackman reverie. 

“Oh Arnie,” she said out loud, with a mixture of fondness and revulsion. At first she’d been amused by Arnie Becker’s antics and untrammeled libido, in some ways thinking him a kindred spirit when it came to getting what he wanted. Only after seeing the wreckage he left in his path, did she understand what an utter swine he really was, and eventually come to see him as a pathetic figure as well. On the other hand, he was good, damned good, she had to admit. If there was an angle on the dissolution of marriage that could be used to further the cause of marriage equality, he’d find it. 

On the other hand…there was one memory of those days that she took out and looked at only on occasion and with great care. If she closed her eyes right now, it was all there. The shy, sweet innocent face, nearly dwarfed by the large hair-do, along with the shoulder pads that had been de rigueur for professional women in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and thank god fashion had moved on from those horrors. It was one night and one kiss and CJ still felt a pang of regret when she thought about it. 

She didn’t regret the kiss. That had been pure impulse; the CJ who lived to scandalize stuffed shirts and win her cases as outrageously as possible. Her interest in Abby had been an attraction to her polar opposite, and a desire to bring the girl out of her shell of conformity and see what kind of passion might lie beneath. 

It almost happened too. The sleeping princess had come to her, awakened, curious, aroused…and CJ had sent her home. It was the right thing to do, of course, although with time, the actual “why” seemed less and less clear. Just because, she supposed. If things had gone a different way…she would have been the co-star in Abby’s coming out drama and the unholy responsibility of it was more than she could face at the time. Perhaps it was the first truly unselfish thing she’d ever done in her life.

Still…it was worth a sigh, because she HAD wanted Abby, and knew in that moment that Abby wanted her. The rightness of it didn’t mean that after all this time, she didn’t still regret letting the chance pass her by. 

She hadn’t seen Abby much since life had taken them in separate ways, but there was a special place on the fridge for that particular card, and CJ had followed Abby’s career with a bit more than professional interest. 

From the girl who’d practically quaked in her boots when Douglas Brackman pulled his over-bearing Senior Partner bullshit on her, Abigail Perkins, ESQ. was now a force to be reckoned with in family law. She had her own firm and represented clients who either ended up on TMZ or in The Wall Street Journal. She’d become a bit of shark in her own right, without sacrificing her kindness or humanity. 

Abby was the divorce lawyer this case needed, and CJ was confident that having survived McKenzie Brackman, and brought up a son into a fine young man, who CJ had heard was at Princeton, she could handle the array of egos involved. Besides, she’d mostly be working with CJ anyway. 

Yes, she was being slightly devious. She was a lawyer, after all, and still her father’s daughter. The old ham had taught her everything she needed to know about manipulation before she was six.  
Not that she had any designs on Abby, beyond seeing how time had treated her and maybe reliving a few of the good old days, while preparing the DOMA case for SCOTUS. But you never knew what could happen with a few memories and a good bottle of wine, did you? 

With her oven heating to bake the brownies, a glass of Napa Valley’s best in hand, and the Camembert softened to perfect spreadability, CJ hit her speed dial for a number she’d been hanging on to for years and never had a better or more plausible reason to call. 

She got a voice mail of course. It was Christmas Eve, and Abby Perkins would be with friends and family. She was the kind of lawyer who _could_ let it all go, if only for a few hours. How CJ envied her that! She generally had to be in Downward Facing Dog on an island with no mobile service, or at least in bed with her two partners, often in an equally fanciful position to achieve it herself. 

CJ felt sure that Abby would get back to her by the time James Coburn got to Spain. 

“Hello Abby. It’s CJ. I’m calling to invite you on the crusade of a lifetime. And to wish you a very Merry Christmas.”


End file.
